From the Archives: Twice a year, inmates of Louisiana’s
maximum-security Angola prison stage a public rodeo within the compound.
Nigel Tisdall went along

It’s not on every holiday that you get to shake hands with a murderer.

“I made a mistake and it cost me,” 37-year-old “BK” admits as I examine some silver jewellery he has made for sale. Surrounding us are rows of stalls piled high with “hobby craft” – good-quality bags, toys, clothing and furniture made by the inmates at Angola, the largest maximum-security prison in the United States.

A hundred miles north-west of New Orleans, the Louisiana State Penitentiary is so called because it stands on the site of a plantation once worked by slaves from West Africa. Now it is home to 5,000 male offenders, three-quarters of whom are on a life sentence. Their crimes may have been violent, but the mood inside seems surprisingly benign, with neat white fences and green lawns basking in the Southern sunshine. Take away the razor-wire and the watchtowers and the cops on quad-bikes, and you could be visiting a manicured country club.

Twice a year Angola swings open its security gates and invites the general public to come on down and enjoy some “extreme rodeo”. Most of the prisoners who take part have never been on a horse, yet now they will try to ride irate bulls and bucking broncos, catch wild mustangs and play poker while being charged by ferocious horned cattle. “It’s an awesome sight,” a biker from Kent tells me, “providing you like seeing people hurt.”

The craft stalls are a sideshow to what began in 1965 as internal recreation. Now the Angola Prison Rodeo is an important rehabilitation tool that draws thousands of shoppers and spectators. The standard of the handiwork on sale is impressive, and the prices reasonable. Beautifully turned bowls made from pecan and persimmon wood sit beside shiny leather saddles and ornate rocking horses. You can buy souvenir T-shirts that quip “Angola – A Gated Community”, and fill up at inmate-run food stalls at which you can buy delicacies such as catfish and chips.

Up on stage a six-piece prison band belts out gospel and r & b numbers with verve. It seems monstrous that the twists of life have left so many talented people lost behind bars until they die.

The age range at Angola is from 17 to 92. Only a few prisoners who are over 35 and have achieved “trustee status” for 10 years are allowed to sell direct to the public. The one unsettling part is a section of stalls where the vendors are fenced off so you have to make purchases by passing notes through the wire. “That part’s for sex offenders and the like,” a member of staff explains. I buy a faux alligator-skin belt for a few bucks, hoping it will help.

There is a party atmosphere up in the wooden seats of the rodeo arena, which can hold 10,500 spectators and was built by the inmates. Participating prisoners wear black-and-white striped shirts and jeans as they face up to snorting bulls and wild horses. Ambulances with open doors are lined up by the ringside – and they’re needed. These lifers have little to lose, and they make determined efforts to stay in the saddle and avoid the stampeding hooves.

It sounds like something more suited to Rome’s Colosseum, but the show is organised by professionals and highly entertaining. As the programme explains, it’s all about “enabling positive behaviour changes”.

Today there are only three nasty-looking injuries, and then we all get to drive away and continue our lives. BK, meanwhile, will return to the dormitory he shares with 94 men, and his job as a filing clerk that pays $2.20 (£1.40) an hour. Around 2050, perhaps, he will enter the inmate-run hospice, and then take up his place in Angola’s Point Lookout Cemetery.

It has been an absorbing, if thought-provoking, only-in-America day out. Covering 18,000 acres, the penitentiary feels like a mini-nation. It has extensive farmland worked by shire horses that are bred here, and a nine-hole golf course where a round costs 10 bucks. Outside the prison gates, an engrossing museum tells the history of Angola, including the many ingenious methods used in attempts to escape from the “Alcatraz of the South”.

The surrounding parish of West Feliciana could not feel more free and easy. It is known as “English plantation country”, having been settled by east-coast Episcopalians after the American Revolution. The landscape is scenic and orderly, with well-kept Baptist churches and jokey mailboxes at the end of drives.

St Francisville, its peaceful capital, sits close to the Mississippi river and makes a good base from which to visit the many fine plantation houses nearby, including Rosedown, with its magnificent allée of oak trees bearded with Spanish moss, and Oakley, where the naturalist John James Audubon painted 32 of his famous Birds of America series. All is calm – until October, when a window briefly opens on to another world, and you can admire a few brave, trapped men going all out for a wild moment of “guts and glory”.

America As You Like It (020 8742 8299; americaasyoulikeit.com) offers a two-week self-drive tour of Louisiana, starting in New Orleans, from £1,180 per person. The price includes return flight from London, accommodation and car hire. Angola is around 2 hours 30 minutes north of New Orleans by car.

Where to stay

St Francisville Inn (001 800 488 6502; stfrancisvilleinn.com) is a fine Victorian house with 10 guest rooms. From $90, including a lavish breakfast.

Butler Greenwood (001 225 635 6312; butlergreenwood.com) is a 1790s plantation home with eight self-catering cottages set in restful grounds with a swimming pool: from $135 with breakfast.

What to do

The Angola Prison Spring Rodeo (001 225 655 2030; angolarodeo.com) took place on April 26 and 27. Fall Rodeos take place every Sunday in October - Admission costs $15 (£10). Tickets are not yet on sale.